Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 in Austria and had a troubled childhood marked by strict parentage and the early loss of siblings. He struggled as an artist but found purpose during World War I, where he excelled militarily. After the war, he became involved in politics, joining and transforming the German Workers' Party into the National Socialist German Workers' Party, promoting intense anti-Semitic views and nationalist rhetoric that paved the way for his rise to power.

1. ADOLF HITLER

2. Adolf hitler

3. Hitler's Early Life*Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, the fourth child ofAlois Schickelgruber and Klara
Hitler in the Austrian town of Braunau.Two of his siblings died from diphtheria when they
were children, and one died shortly after birth. Alois was a customs official, illegitimate by
birth, who was described by his housemaid as a "very strict but comfortable" man.Young
Adolf was showered with love and affection by his mother.
*When Adolf was three years old, the family moved to Passau, along the Inn River on the
German side of the border. A brother, Edmond, was born two years later.The family moved
once more in 1895 to the farm community of Hafeld, 30 miles southwest of Linz. Another
sister, Paula, was born in 1896, the sixth of the union, supplemented by a half brother and
half sister from one of his father's two previous marriages.
*Following another family move, Adolf lived for six months across from a large Benedictine
monastery.The monastery's coat of arms' most salient feature was a swastika. As a
youngster, Adolf's dream was to enter the priesthood.While there is anecdotal evidence that
Adolf's father regularly beat him during his childhood, it was not unusual for discipline to be
enforced in that way during that period.

4. • By 1900, Hitler's talents as an artist surfaced. He did well enough in school to be eligible
for either the university preparatory "gymnasium" or the technical/scientific Realschule.
Because the latter had a course in drawing, Adolf accepted his father's decision to enroll
him in the Realschule. He did not do well there.
• Adolf's father died in 1903 after suffering a pleural hemorrhage. Adolf himself suffered
from lung infections, and he quit school at the age of 16, partially the result of ill health
and partially the result of poor school work.
• In 1906, Adolf was permitted to visitVienna, but he was unable to gain admission to a
prestigious art school. His mother developed terminal breast cancer and was treated by
Dr. Edward Bloch, a Jewish doctor who served the poor.After an operation and
excruciatingly painful and expensive treatments with a dangerous drug, she died on
December 21, 1907

5. • Hitler spent six years inVienna, living on a small legacy from his father and an orphan's
pension.Virtually penniless by 1909, he wanderedVienna as a transient, sleeping in bars,
flophouses, and shelters for the homeless, including, ironically, those financed by Jewish
philanthropists. It was during this period that he developed his prejudices about Jews, his
interest in politics, and debating skills. According to JohnToland's biography, Adolf Hitler,
two of his closest friends at this time were Jewish, and he admired Jewish art dealers and
Jewish operatic performers and producers. However,Vienna was a center of anti-
Semitism, and the media's portrayal of Jews as scapegoats with stereotyped attributes
did not escape Hitler's fascination.
• In May 1913, Hitler, seeking to avoid military service, leftVienna for Munich, the capital of
Bavaria, following a windfall received from an aunt who was dying. In January, the police
came to his door bearing a draft notice from the Austrian government.The document
threatened a year in prison and a fine if he was found guilty of leaving his native land with
the intent of evading conscription. Hitler was arrested on the spot and taken to the
Austrian Consulate. Upon reporting to Salzburg for duty, he was found "unfit...too
weak...and unable to bear arms."

6. Hitler with with his Family
Eva Braun

8. Hitler's World War I Service
• When World War I was touched off by the assassination by a Serb of the heir to the Austrian
Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Hitler's passions against foreigners, particularly Slavs, were
inflamed. He was caught up in the patriotism of the time, and submitted a petition to enlist in the
Bavarian army. After less than two months of training, Hitler's regiment saw its first combat near
Ypres, against the British and Belgians. Hitler narrowly escaped death in battle several times, and
was eventually awarded two Iron Crosses for bravery. He rose to the rank of lance corporal but no
further. In October 1916, he was wounded by an enemy shell and evacuated to a Berlin area
hospital. After recovering, and serving a total of four years in the trenches, he was temporarily
blinded by a mustard gas attack in Belgium in October 1918.
• Communist-inspired insurrections shook Germany while Hitler was recovering from his injuries.
Some Jews were leaders of these abortive revolutions, and this inspired hatred of Jews as well as
Communists. On November 9th, the Kaiser abdicated and the Socialists gained control of the
government. Anarchy was more the rule in the cities.

9. Free Corps
•The Free Corps was a paramilitary
organization composed of vigilante war
veterans who banded together to fight the
growing Communist insurgency which was
taking over Germany. The Free Corps crushed
this insurgency. Its members formed the
nucleus of the Nazi "brown-shirts" (S.A.)
which served as the Nazi party's army.

10. • With the loss of the war, the German monarchy came to an end and a republic was
proclaimed. A constitution was written providing for a President with broad political
and military power and a parliamentary democracy.A national election was held to
elect 423 deputies to the National Assembly.The centrist parties swept to victory.The
result was what is known as the Weimar Republic. On June 28, 1919, the German
government ratified theTreaty ofVersailles. Under the terms of the treaty which ended
hostilities in the War, Germany had to pay reparations for all civilian damages caused
by the war. Germany also lost her colonies and large portions of German territory. A 30-
mile strip on the right bank of the Rhine was demilitarized. Limits were placed on
German armaments and military strength.The terms of the treaty were humiliating to
most Germans, and condemnation of its terms undermined the government and
served as a rallying cry for those who like Hitler believed Germany was ultimately
destined for greatness.
Weimar Republic

11. German Worker's
Party• Soon after the war, Hitler was recruited to join a military intelligence unit, and was
assigned to keep tabs on the GermanWorker's Party. At the time, it was comprised of only
a handful of members. It was disorganized and had no program, but its members
expressed a right-wing doctrine consonant with Hitler's. He saw this party as a vehicle to
reach his political ends. His blossoming hatred of the Jews became part of the
organization's political platform. Hitler built up the party, converting it from a de facto
discussion group to an actual political party. Advertising for the party's meetings appeared
in anti-Semitic newspapers.The turning point of Hitler's mesmerizing oratorical career
occurred at one such meeting held on October 16, 1919. Hitler's emotional delivery of an
impromptu speech captivated his audience.Through word of mouth, donations poured
into the party's coffers, and subsequent mass meetings attracted hundreds of Germans
eager to hear the young, forceful and hypnotic leader

12. • With the assistance of party staff, Hitler drafted a party program consisting of twenty-five
points.This platform was presented at a public meeting on February 24, 1920, with over
2,000 eager participants. After hecklers were forcibly removed by Hitler supporters armed
with rubber truncheons and whips, Hitler electrified the audience with his masterful
demagoguery. Jews were the principal target of his diatribe. Among the 25 points were
revoking theVersaillesTreaty, confiscating war profits, expropriating land without
compensation for use by the state, revoking civil rights forJews, and expelling those Jews
who had emigrated intoGermany after the war began.
• The following day,The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were published in the local anti-Semitic
newspaper.The false, but alarming accusations reinforced Hitler's anti-Semitism. Soon after,
treatment of the Jews was a major theme of Hitler's orations, and the increasing
scapegoating of the Jews for inflation, political instability, unemployment, and the
humiliation in the war, found a willing audience. Jews were tied to "internationalism" by
Hitler.The name of the party was changed to the National Socialist GermanWorker's party,
and the red flag with the swastika was adopted as the party symbol. A local newspaper
which appealed to anti-Semites was on the verge of bankruptcy, and Hitler raised funds to
purchase it for the party.

13. • In January 1923, French and Belgian troops marched into Germany to settle a
reparations dispute. Germans resented this occupation, which also had an
adverse effect on the economy. Hitler's party benefited by the reaction to this
development, and exploited it by holding mass protest rallies despite a ban
on such rallies by the local police.
• The Nazi party began drawing thousands of new members, many of whom
were victims of hyper-inflation and found comfort in blaming theJews for
this trouble.The price of an egg, for example, had inflated to 30 million times
its original price in just 10 years. Economic upheaval generally breeds political
upheaval, and Germany in the 1920s was no exception.

14. The Munich
Putsch• The Bavarian government defied theWeimar Republic, accusing it of being too
far left. Hitler endorsed the fall of theWeimar Republic, and declared at a
public rally on October 30, 1923 that he was prepared to march on Berlin to rid
the government of the Communists and theJews. On November 8, 1923, Hitler
held a rally at a Munich beer hall and proclaimed a revolution.The following
day, he led 2,000 armed "brown-shirts" in an attempt to take over the
Bavarian government.This putsch was resisted and put down by the police,
after more than a dozen were killed in the fighting. Hitler suffered a broken
and dislocated arm in the melee, was arrested, and was imprisoned at
Landsberg. He received a five-year sentence.

15. Mein Kampf
• Hitler served only nine months of his five-year term.While in prison, he wrote the first
volume of Mein Kampf. It was partly an autobiographical book (although filled with glorified
inaccuracies, self-serving half-truths and outright revisionism) which also detailed his views
on the future of the German people.There were several targets of the vicious diatribes in
the book, such as democrats, Communists, and internationalists. But he reserved the brunt
of his vituperation for the Jews, whom he portrayed as responsible for all of the problems
and evils of the world, particularly democracy,Communism, and internationalism, as well as
Germany's defeat in the War. Jews were the German nation's true enemy, he wrote.They
had no culture of their own, he asserted, but perverted existing cultures such as Germany's
with their parasitism. As such, they were not a race, but an anti-race. "[The Jews'] ultimate
goal is the denaturalization, the promiscuous bastardization of other peoples, the lowering
of the racial level of the highest peoples as well as the domination of his racial mishmash
through the extirpation of the folkish intelligentsia and its replacement by the members of
his own people," he wrote. On the contrary, the German people were of the highest racial
purity and those destined to be the master race according to Hitler.To maintain that purity,
it was necessary to avoid intermarriage with subhuman races such as Jews and Slavs.

16. • Germany could stop the Jews from conquering the world only by eliminating them. By
doing so, Germany could also find Lebensraum, living space, without which the superior
German culture would decay.This living space, Hitler continued, would come from
conquering Russia (which was under the control of Jewish Marxists, he believed) and the
Slavic countries.This empire would be launched after democracy was eliminated and a
"FÅhrer" called upon to rebuild the German Reich.
• A second volume of Mein Kampf was published in 1927. It included a history of the Nazi
party to that time and its program, as well as a primer on how to obtain and retain
political power, how to use propaganda and terrorism, and how to build a political
organization.
• While Mein Kampf was crudely written and filled with embarrassing tangents and
ramblings, it struck a responsive chord among its target those Germans who believed it
was their destiny to dominate the world.The book sold over five million copies by the
start ofWorldWar II.

17. concentration
camps• The first Nazi concentration camps were hastily erected in Germany in February 1933
immediately after Hitler became Chancellor and his NSDAP was given control over the
police through Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick and Prussian Acting Interior Minister
Hermann Göring. Used to hold and torture political opponents and union organizers, the
camps held around 45,000 prisoners by 1933 and were greatly expanded after the
Reichstag fire of that year.
• Only about 3,000 inmates remained in the camps when in 1934–35 Heinrich Himmler's SS
took full control of the police and concentration camps throughout Germany. It was then
that Hitler allowed Himmler to start using the camps' facilities and personnel to purge
German society of so-called "racially undesirable elements" such as Jews, criminals,
homosexuals, and Romani people.

18. • Between 1939 and 1942 duringWorld War II, the number of camps exploded
to more than 300,[3] as political prisoners and "undesirable elements" from
across Europe were mass-incarcerated[4] generally without judicial process.
• The concentration camps were administered since 1934 by Concentration
Camps Inspectorate which in 1942 was merged into SS-Wirtschafts-
Verwaltungshauptamt and were guarded by SS-Totenkopfverbände.
• Holocaust scholars draw a distinction between concentration camps
(described in this article) and extermination camps, which were established
by the Nazis for the industrial-scale mass murder of the predominantly
Jewish ghetto and concentration camp populations.

19. •20 April 1889
Adolf Hitler is born on April 20th in Braunau am Inn in the empire of Austria-Hungary.
His parents' families are both of poor peasant backgrounds. His father, Alois, regarded as strict and
distant, becomes a customs official and expects Adolf to follow a career into the civil service.
Hitler’s mother, Klara, is of a more compassionate nature, adoring and indulging her son.
At the age of six Adolf attends school and, while clearly intelligent, he is uninterested in formal
education, eventually leaving with a poor educational record of achievement.
The death of his father when Adolf was 13, releases the pressure on him to get a job working for
the civil service, Adolf is able to pursue his preferred choice of study, that of art. He attends art
school and regards himself as an artist, absorbing diverse cultural influences, the opera, theatre,
reading and drawing.
•
1907
Hitler moves to Vienna with the aim of attending the Vienna Academy of Art, but his application is
rejected. His disappointment is compounded by his failure to also get into the Vienna School of
Architecture due to his inability to provide a school leaving certificate.

20. •1909—1913
Without any means of money, Hitler struggles to survive in Vienna, living in a men’s hostel. He sells
postcards which he’s drawn, of famous sights, and undertakes a series of menial jobs,to earn money.
During this period of poverty, Hitler engages in much political activity, attending meetings, absorbing
political newspapers and literature.
•
1913
Faced with military service for the Habsburg Empire, Hitler takes action to evade this by moving to Munich
in Southern Germany. This move is possible in part due to his inheritance of a small legacy from his
father’s estate. Here his life continues much as before, until world events changed the course of Hitler’s
life.
•
1914
At the outbreak of the First World War, Hitler volunteers for service in the German army and joined the 16th
Barvarian Reserve Infantry Regiment. He distinguishes himself in service, being promoted to corporal and
decorated with the Iron Cross for services as a runner on the western front.
•
1918
At the time of the armistice, Hitler is lying in hospital suffering from temporary blindness due to a British
gas attack in Ypres Salient. He returns to his regiment in Munich, later in the year.

21. •1919
Intent on remaining in the army, having found real purpose to his life, Hitler is appointed to the
Intelligence/Propaganda section where he undertakes political training. His activities involve
making speeches to the troops advocating German nationalism and anti-Socialism, where he
developed further his oratory skills.
He also acts as an army informer, spying on small political parties. He joins the German Workers’
Party, an extreme anti-communist, anti-Semitic right wing organisation.
•
1920
Hitler is discharged from the army. In the German Worker’s Party he undertakes responsibility for
publicity and propaganda. He changes the party’s name to the National Socialist German Workers
Party, (or Nazi for short) The party represents a combination of intense hatred for the politicians
who they considered had dishonoured Germany by signing the Versailles Treaty and exploiting
local grievances against a weak federal government.
•
1921
Hitler challenges Anton Drexler to become leader of the Nazi party. After initial resistance, Drexler
agrees and Hitler becomes the new leader of the party.

22. •1923
Along with other right wing factions and General Ludendorff he attempts to overthrow the Bavarian
government with an armed uprising. The event became known as The Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler and 2000 Nazi’s
march through Munich to the Beer Hall, to take over a meeting chaired by three of the most important
individuals in Bavarian politics.
The following day, the Nazis march in the streets, the police open fire. Hitler escapes but is captured, tried for
treason and serves 9 months in Landsberg prison. It was during his imprisonment that he began dictating his
thoughts to Rudolf Hess, which emerged in the book Mein Kampf (my struggle). It is a mixture of
autobiography, political ideology and an examination of the techniques of propaganda.
•
1925
Hitler re-founds the Nazi party.
•
1928
Hitler's half-sister (Angela Raubal) and her daughter Geli, move into Hitler's home on the Obersalzburg. Hitler's
relationship towards Geli initially kindly, eventually borders on the obsessive, fueling rumours that they were
romantically linked; Hitler denied this.
•
September 1930
In the General Election, the Nazi Party increases its representatives in parliament from 14 to 107. Hitler is now
the leader of the second largest party in Germany.

23. •1931
Hitler challenges Paul von Hindenburg for the presidency, but fails to win.
•
September 1931
Geli Raubal found dead at Hitler's flat in Munich. She was 23. Verdict: suicide.
•
1932
Hitler becomes a German citizen—enabling him to stand in the Presidential election against
Hindenburg.
Became the first person to electioneer by aircraft, the campaign (masterminded by Josef
Goebbels) was entitled 'Hitler over Germany'.
•
January 1933
Hitler becomes chancellor of a coalition government, where the Nazis have a third of the
seats in the Reichstag.
•
February 1933
The German Reichstag is destroyed by fire. The plot and execution is almost certainly due to
the Nazis but they point the finger at the communists and trigger a General Election.

24. •March 1933
The Enabling Act passed—powers of legislation pass to Hitler’s cabinet for four years, making him
virtual dictator.
He proclaims the Nazi Party is the only political party permitted in Germany. All other parties and
trade unions are disbanded. Individual German states lose any autonomous powers, while Nazi
officials become state governors.
•
April 1933
Communist party banned.
•
May 1933
Socialists, Trade Unions and strikes banned.
•
October 1933
Hitler withdraws from the League of Nations. In the following months, he trebles the size of the
German Army and ignores the arms restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.
•
June 1934
Night of the Long Knives. Hitler crushes all opposition within his own party—thus eliminating any of
his rivals.

25. •July 1934
After the death of President Hindenburg, Hitler becomes “Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor” and
abolishes the title of President.
•
1935
Hitler re-arms Germany with the aim of undoing the Treaty of Versailles and uniting all the German
peoples. Military conscription is introduced.
•
March 1938
The Austrian Chancellor, leader of the Austrian Nazi Party, invites the German army to occupy
Austria and proclaim a union with Germany.
•
September 1938
British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain meets Hitler in Germany. Britain, France and Italy sign
the Munich Agreement which gives the Sudetenland (the German populated borderlands of
Czechoslavakia), to Germany.
•
October 1938
German army occupies the Sudetenland.

26. •November 1938
In what is historically referred to as Crystal Night, 7,500 Jewish shops are destroyed and 400
synagogues are burnt. The attack is portrayed as a spontaneous reaction to the death of a German
diplomat by a Jewish refugee in Paris. It is actually orchestrated by the Nazi party who also kill
many Jews and send 20,000 to concentration camps.
Crystal Night is considered to be the beginning of the Final Solution and the Holocaust, which you
can study in more depth. The mass killing represented by the Holocaust raises many questions
concerning the development of European civilisation during the twentieth century.
•
1939
Peace treaty with Russia secured with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Hitler invades Poland and after
3 weeks of lightning war or ‘Blitzkrieg’. The country is divided between Russia and Germany.
•
1940
The Nazis occupy Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and France. Romania and Yugoslavia are
invaded.
•
June 1941
Germany attacks Russia, ignoring the peace pact. Operation Barbarossa, The German invasion of
Russia, begins.

27. •December 1941
Japanese Air Force attacks Pearl Harbour and war is declared on the US.
•
February 1943
Although commanded by Hitler to stand and fight, the Germans surrender in the battle of
Stalingrad. From this point in the war, Germany is continually retreating.
•
July 1944
Hitler survives an assassination attempt by Colonel Stauffenberg, who places a bomb in a
briefcase under a table close to Hitler. As a result, Hitler purges the army of all possible suspects.
•
January 1945
Soviet troops enter Nazi Germany.
•
22 April 1945
Hitler decides to stay in Berlin to the last.
•
26 April 1945
Berlin completely besieged by the Soviet Army Fronts of Marshals Koniev and Zhukov.
•

28. • 30 April 1945 Hitler commits suicide with his wife of two days, Eva
Braun; their bodies are believed to have been cremated.

30. Nazism
•Nazism, or National Socialism in full (German:
Nationalsozialismus), is the ideology and practice associated
associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party and
well as other related far-right groups. It was also
contemporaneous or promoted in other European countries,
particularly those with large ethnic German communities
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia Usually
characterised as a form of fascism that incorporates
racism and antisemitism, Nazism originally developed from
influences of pan-Germanism, the Völkisch German
movement and the anti-communist Freikorps paramilitary
in post-First World War Germany, which many Germans felt

31. Symbol of
NAZI party
Swastika

32. ADOLF HITLER WITH
NAZI PARTY

33. Adolf Hitler in 1937
Führer of Germany
In office
2 August 1934 – 30 April 1945
Deputy
•Rudolf Hess (1933–1941)
•Position vacant
Preceded by
Paul von Hindenburg
(as President)
Succeeded by
Karl Dönitz
(as President)

34. Personal details
Born
20 April 1889
Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary
Died
30 April 1945 (aged 56)
Berlin,Germany
Nationality
•Austrian citizen until 7 April 1925
•German citizen after 25 February 1932
Political party National SocialistGerman Workers' Party (1921–1945)
Other political
affiliations
German Workers‘ party (1920–1921)
Spouse(s)
Eva Braun
(29–30 April 1945)
Occupation Politician, soldier
Religion See: Religious views of Adolf Hitler